A city going nowhere fast

Sydney's reliance on cars is costing more than $18 billion a year through congestion, accidents and air pollution, and threatens to stunt the state's economy.

24 August 2010Alexandra Smith, Transport Reporter and Sherrill Nixon

A city going nowhere fast

An independent report commissioned by the Herald into the hidden social costs of Sydney's ailing transport network reveals commuters are wasting more than three days of their lives every year stuck in traffic.

Poor transport planning will stall the city's economy and suppress wages, and Sydney risks losing jobs and investment to Melbourne and Brisbane as congestion makes it an unattractive place to live and work.

The study, by the Centre for International Economics, found the social costs would grow to nearly $24 billion in 2020 unless the State Government invests billions of dollars to fix Sydney's dysfunctional transport network.

The report modelled the hidden costs of the transport crisis and found the Government needs to invest $11 billion on top of its current spending over the next 15 years, just to keep these costs at last year's level.

"The demands are growing faster than our current level of commitment," the centre's director, Kerry Barwise, said.

"The NSW Government, on infrastructure, is steering through the rear-view mirror. They look back then they decide how much infrastructure they need, not forward to the real needs."

The cost of time lost stuck in traffic and higher vehicle operating expenses makes up about $12 billion of the current social costs of $18 billion.

Accidents and the costs from resulting health care, lost labour and vehicle repairs contribute $3.9 billion. Air pollution costs more than $1 billion and greenhouse gas emissions $145 million, the report says.

Already, Sydney motorists spend 73 hours a year stuck in traffic if they travel just 22 kilometres a day, and that will only worsen, the consultants say.

Sydney's clogged roads delay commuters 33 seconds for every kilometre they drive and if they travel 8000 kilometres a year, they will spend an extra 73 hours behind the wheel. Based on the average hourly wage of about $25, that amounts "conservatively" to a cost of more than $1800 a year per motorist - and that does not include increased fuel consumption from driving in traffic.

But the social costs are not paid directly by the motorists. If they were, expenses such as registration, insurance, road tolls and fuel would be much higher.

"Failure to charge motorists for these costs sees the community effectively subsidising private vehicle use compared to other transport modes, and in doing so, reduces public transport and contributes to further losses on public transport," the report says.

The number of kilometres travelled in Sydney is predicted to rise by nearly a third in the next 15 years - as Sydney's population increases by an average of 42,000 people a year until 2020 - and the report warns that the "liveability" of Sydney and the state's economic activity will deteriorate.

If immediate steps are not taken to ease congestion, Sydney will surrender economic growth to Melbourne and Brisbane because they will be seen as easier and cheaper to get around.

Clogged roads will force up production costs, which will lead to less demand for goods and services and therefore less demand for investment or the workers to make the products.

NSW's Sustainability Commissioner, Peter Newman, said it was the first time he had seen an analysis translate the social costs of transport into an amount that could be spent on infrastructure to overcome them.

But he warned the Government against investing in roads at the expense of public transport. "You could take that [$11 billion] and say we need to build a lot more roads but that would just exacerbate the [congestion] problem," Professor Newman said.

"There's a vicious cycle there of just creating more traffic ... that's the cycle we have got to get out of and I don't see a way around that except for creating better public transport."

The report warns that underspending will also damage the economies of Newcastle and Wollongong. But the report says Sydney's obsession with cars is unlikely to subside because of the Government's tardiness in expanding rail to the city's fringes, where there will be at least 275,000 new houses built in the next 25 years.

"Increasing reliance on road transport looks set to continue as the rail network fails to keep pace with continued housing and employment growth in suburbs away from the rail network," it says.

Highways to hell

Increasing costs associated with road transport in Sydney

2005

2020

% INCREASE

Vehicle km travelled (million km)

42,428

54,648

28.8

$ per vehicle km travelled

0.425

0.437

Social costs of road transport

Congestion ($m)

12,072

16,569

37.2

Accidents ($m)

3864

4977

28.8

Greenhouse gas emissions ($m)

145

187

29.1

Air pollution ($m)

1223

1,228

0.4

Subsidies to the RTA ($m)

741

946

27.7

Total

18,045

23,906

32.5

Source: BTRE; CIE.

Driven around the bend: tales of a life on the road

Alexandra Smith

Jane Whelan jokes that she could semi-retire if she was not wasting her life behind the wheel of her car.

To make a 9am meeting in the city centre she must be on the road by 6.30am. It could be an hour's drive but the congestion, particularly on the M5, means most of her trip is virtually a crawl.

As the NSW area manager of Century 21, Ms Whelan often drives between the 50 offices she manages but it is the morning peak hour commute - which takes her more than two hours- that wears her out.

As the minutes, then hours, tick by on her drive to work, Ms Whelan - who commutes from Harrington Park, near Camden, to her city office - calculates how much more productive she could be. "I can only really make two appointments a day, and if it wasn't for all the traffic I could probably make six."

Ms Whelan said her company was being forced to restructure to boost productivity and was encouraging senior managers to work from home rather than waste time in Sydney's bottlenecks.

Brendan Burrows, a financial adviser, lives in Mosman and drives to work in Parramatta each day. His trip can be done in 30 minutes but if he hits the snooze button on his alarm clock, Mr Burrows can be guaranteed he will spend about an hour in his car, sometimes travelling just one kilometre in 10 minutes.

"When you are sitting in traffic just twiddling your thumbs you do think, 'Geez, I could have had 20 minutes more sleep'," Mr Burrows said.

Mr Burrows dreads Epping Road, which is often at a standstill despite driving against the peak hour traffic, but he still prefers to drive to work because his experiences with the rail system are worse.

Signalling breakdowns on the western line one night last week meant Mr Burrows left his office at 8pm but did not make it home until 9.45pm.

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